The Country Girl by David Garrick is a derivative play adapted from The Country Wife by William Wycherley. By the time David Garrick adapted The Country Wife into The Country Girl, Wycherley's play was considered too raunchy and scandalous to show in theaters. In The Country Girl the plot and characters of The Country Wife are reformed to exclude elements of the play which, at the time, were considered immoral or in bad taste. [1]
In The Country Girl, the most significant changes to the plot result from the removal of Horner, who in The Country Wife pretended to be impotent in order to seduce the wives of other men, particularly Mrs. Pinchwife, the country wife whom Wycherley's play is named after. Rather than a plot focused on Horner's schemes and other raunchy elements, The Country Girl features the romance between the young aristocrat, Belville and Miss Peggy, an unmarried country girl who replaces Mrs. Pinchwife, and on Harcourt's wooing of Alithea who is engaged to Mr. Sparkish. Additionally, Harcourt, previously a less-than-reputable friend of Horner's, is rewritten as Belville's responsible uncle and mentor.
The Country Girl was initially performed in 1766 at the Drury-Lane Theatre in Dublin. The playbill lists Mr. Holand as Moody, Mr. Palmer as Harcourt, Mr. Dodd as Sparkish, Samuel Cautherley as Belville, Mr. Strange as a Footman, Master Burton as a Country-Boy, Mrs. Palmer as Alithea, Miss Reynolds as Miss Peggy, and Miss Pope as Lucy. [2]
The Country Girl debuted in London in 1791 with Mr. King as Moody, Mr. Palmer as Harcourt, Mr. Dodd as Sparkish, Mr. Whitfield as Belville, Mr. Spencer as a Footman, Mr. Jones as a Countryman, Mr. Alfred as a Servant, Mrs. Jordan as Miss Piggy, Mrs. Ward as Alithia, and Mrs. Williames as Lucy. [3]
The Country Girl was first performed in America at a theater in New York in 1806. In the New York production, Mr. Harwood as Moody, Mr. Barrymoore once again as Harcourt, Mr. Twaits as Sparkish, Mr. Holland as Belville, Mr. Maddocks as William, Mr. Purser as the Countryman, Mrs. Jones as Miss Peggy, Miss Mellon as Alithea, and Mrs. Scott as Lucy. [4]
"Restoration comedy" is English comedy written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710. Comedy of manners is used as a synonym of Restoration comedy. After public stage performances had been banned for 18 years by the Puritan regime, the re-opening of the theatres in 1660 signalled a renaissance of English drama. Sexually explicit language was encouraged by King Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish style of his court. Historian George Norman Clark argues:
The best-known fact about the Restoration drama is that it is immoral. The dramatists did not criticize the accepted morality about gambling, drink, love, and pleasure generally, or try, like the dramatists of our own time, to work out their own view of character and conduct. What they did was, according to their respective inclinations, to mock at all restraints. Some were gross, others delicately improper....The dramatists did not merely say anything they liked: they also intended to glory in it and to shock those who did not like it.
David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson. He appeared in a number of amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III, audiences and managers began to take notice.
The Country Wife is a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley. A product of the tolerant early Restoration period, the play reflects an aristocratic and anti-Puritan ideology, and was controversial for its sexual explicitness even in its own time. The title itself contains a lewd pun with regard to the first syllable of "country". It is based on several plays by Molière, with added features that 1670s London audiences demanded: colloquial prose dialogue in place of Molière's verse, a complicated, fast-paced plot tangle, and many sex jokes. It turns on two indelicate plot devices: a rake's trick of pretending impotence to safely have clandestine affairs with married women, and the arrival in London of an inexperienced young "country wife", with her discovery of the joys of town life, especially the fascinating London men. The implied condition the Rake, Horner, claimed to suffer from was, he said, contracted in France whilst "dealing with common women". The only cure was to have a surgeon drastically reduce the extent of his manly stature; therefore, he could be no threat to any man's wife.
Susannah Maria Cibber was a celebrated English singer and actress. She was the sister of the composer Thomas Arne. Although she began her career as a soprano, her voice lowered in the early part of her career to that of a true contralto. She was universally admired for her ability to move her audiences emotionally both as an actress and vocalist. Possessing a sweet, expressive, and agile singing voice with a wide vocal range, Cibber was an immensely popular singer, even if at times her voice was criticized for a lack of polished technique. Charles Burney wrote of her singing that "by a natural pathos, and perfect conception of the words, she often penetrated the heart, when others, with infinitely greater voice and skill, could only reach the ear." Cibber was particularly admired by Handel, who wrote numerous parts especially for her including the contralto arias in his 1741 oratorio Messiah, the role of Micah in Samson, the role of Lichas in Hercules and the role of David in Saul among others. In the mid-1730s she began appearing in plays in addition to appearing in operas and oratorios. She became the greatest dramatic actress of the eighteenth-century London stage and at the time of her death was the highest-paid actress in England.
Hugh Kelly was an Irish dramatist and poet. From the 1760s he was employed as a propagandist for the British government, attacking members of the Opposition. After arriving in London in 1760 to work as a staymaker, he soon turned to become a writer and made a living as a journalist. In 1766 he published Thespis, a long poem about the acting profession, which gained him wide attention. He followed up this success with the novel Memoirs of a Magdalen in 1767. He ultimately became known for his stage plays such as False Delicacy and A Word to the Wise.
Hannah Pritchard (1711–1768) was an English actress who regularly played opposite David Garrick. She performed many significant Shakespearean roles and created on stage many important female roles by contemporary playwrights.
Margaret De Wolfe Wycherly was an English stage and film actress. She spent many years in the United States and is best remembered for her Broadway roles and Hollywood character parts. On screen she played mother to Gary Cooper and James Cagney.
The Country Girl is a 1915 American short silent romantic comedy-drama film starring Florence La Badie and directed by Frederic Richard Sullivan. The film is based on David Garrick's 1766 play The Country Girl.
John Bell (1745–1831) was an English publisher. Originally a bookseller and printer, he also innovated in typography, being responsible for an influential font that omitted the long s. He was also noted for drawing the reading public to "the best literature" by commissioning attractive art work to accompany the printed work.
Richard Yates was an English comic actor, who worked at the Haymarket Theatre and Drury Lane among others, appearing in David Garrick's King Lear. He also worked in theatre management, and set up the New Theatre in Birmingham in 1773. Both his first wife, Elizabeth Mary and Mary Anne Graham were actresses.
John Palmer was an actor on the English stage in the eighteenth century. There was also another John Palmer (1728–1768) who was known as Gentleman Palmer.
John Bannister, , English actor and theatre manager. The principal source for his life are his own Memoirs, and as a leading performer his career is well documented.
Thomas King (1730–1805) was an English actor, known also as a theatre manager and dramatist.
Thomas Hull (1728–1808) was an English actor and dramatist.
James William Dodd (1740?–1796) was an English actor, one of David Garrick's picked company.
Thomas Walker (1698–1744) was an English actor and dramatist.
John Moody (1727?–1812), original name John Cochran, was an Irish actor.
William Twaits was a British singer, dancer and actor-manager whose career was mostly in the United States in the early 19th-century.
Samuel Cautherley (c.1747–1805) was a British stage actor. His surname is sometimes spelt as Cautherly.
Mary Willis was a British stage actress of the eighteenth century.